DALLAS — The Dallas media is all over the eyebrow-raising, outrageous — and ultimately sad — story of a now-infamous racist chant by some Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) fraternity members at Oklahoma University. You see, “Big D” has a special interest in this case, because the two high profile young chanters had seemingly been local success stories – - products of Dallas. ‘It could have been two...

2015 is the 20th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action regarding the status of women. Though 189 governments signed the document, much remains to be done in democratic and non-democratic states to improve women’s lives. Democracy in any nation is a mirage unless all citizens have equal rights and equality of opportunity. This includes both genders as well as LGBT, racial, ethnic, and religious groups. However,...

WASHINGTON — See, I keep telling you that old-fashioned racism is alive and well in this country. After the fraternity bus sing-along at the University of Oklahoma, do you hear me now? Frankly, the happy-go-lucky bigotry of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) fraternity brothers — captured on video and shown to the world — shocked even me. And I was raised in the South, back in the days when Jim Crow was under assault but...

OU Students Apologize For Racist Song Two students from the Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) fraternity, who had been expelled from the University of Oklahoma for singing a racist song, have issued statements of apology for the act. The families of the expelled students — Levi Pettit and Parker Rice — issued the statements on their behalf late Tuesday. The statement was...

As Americans, we have a rigid sense of patriotism and believe that our way is the right way. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. We are not a perfect nation and our policies are in desperate need of fixing. One of the most important issues we deal with is education and, as we’ve seen from previous studies, our performance in math, literature and science have suffered. For some, it’s a hard reality to accept, but...

The recent reciting of a racist chant by members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter at the University of Oklahoma — which led to outrage and spawned the hashtag #SAEHatesMe on Twitter — isn’t the first incident of allegedly racist behavior linked to the fraternity. In February 2013, SAE members at Washington University in St....

Fraternity Suspends University Of Oklahoma Students For Racist Video Students of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) fraternity at the University of Oklahoma (OU) have been suspended after the discovery of a video with a racist chant. The fraternity announced that it will close down the OU chapter following the incident. SAE said in a statement that its investigation confirmed that the video showed members...

The Danville Education Association (Pa.) has been operating without a contract for three years. Two years ago, the teachers approved recommendations of an independent fact-finder; the board rejected it. This eventually led to a protest strike of five days in April 2014. Recently, the teachers and the board agreed to submit their proposals to an independent arbitrator. Working under regulations of the Pennsylvania Labor Relations...

In March of 1988, the cover and an essay in The New Republic depicted selfish “greedy geezers” draining America of resources that might be utilized in a more constructive fashion to provide growth and economic development. Funding of the entitlement programs Medicare and Social Security were leaving less money available to be spent on education and preschool activities, and the maintenance and expansion of the nation’s infrastructure....

The conservative movement has become totally divorced from reality, often denying science and facts to make their positions. Here’s just three examples from the past day. Conservatives Hate Historical Facts Conservatives hate actual American history as the facts contradict so many of their claims. As Joseph Ellis has explained, the Founding Fathers established a secular state with overlapping sources of authority and a blurring...

Here’s a question for you: What do we need more of in our public schools? The correct answer is “money.” But lawmakers in Oklahoma have an answer of their own: “organized religion.” The new AP History curriculum hasn’t received much love from the Republican National Committee; back in September, they made headlines by condemning what they called a “radical,” “revisionist,” and “biased” curriculum. Coming under fire were those parts of...

The governor who tells it like it is, who speaks from the heart, is now sucking up to the Republican base with a calculated flip-flop on Common Core, the program to establish national standards for educational achievement. Common Core is toxic to the GOP base, which doesn’t like Washington playing any big role in education....

In the opening act of Racing Extinction, director Louis Psihoyos confesses that nothing is worse for the environment than making a movie about it, a heavy fact for someone as committed to awareness as he. If you’re going to succumb to a necessary evil, do it with the poignancy and desperate grandiosity of Psihoyos. With Racing Extinction, he and his team have created a loud, richly felt cry for the future of every species with which...

Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 percent Of everything you think, And of everything you do, Is for yourself – And there isn’t one. – Wei Wu Wei Wei Wu Wei is the pen name of Terence Gray, a 20th-century, Anglo-Irish author of pithy provocations aimed, like the one in the epigraph, at the prevailing notion of selfhood. By flatly denying the existence of self, he means to shock us into realizing that the self we take...

Community Colleges Offer a Smooth Transition By Dale Schlundt, M.A. The question of “where do I go from here” can be a daunting challenge for many high school seniors getting ready to advance to the next stage of their lives. The thought of “being on your own”, even if that means living at home while attending college, can be a scary and uncertain time in a young adult’s life. When an individual asks my advice about the next step...

What is college for? Though the answer may have once been obvious, it is no longer so. Even now, many would say college is for men and women to further their educations to increase their powers of critical thinking and to prepare themselves for careers in the real world. Really? Then why are football and basketball of the five major university conferences emphasized at the participating institutions and academics made secondary? Why...

To put this in context, it occurred prior to the Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris. The University of Chicago, through the Provost’s office, established a Committee on Freedom of Expression. The committee, comprised of seven professors from fields as diverse as medicine, law, psychology, literature and the arts, and headed by law professor Geoffrey Stone, was appointed to examine “recent events nationwide that have tested institutional...

WASHINGTON — Permit me to declare my bias: I came to revere community colleges for very personal reasons and learned to admire them because they are central to restoring social and economic mobility in our nation. My late mother spent most of her work life as a teacher and a librarian. Her passions were to get every kid she encountered to love reading and to encourage students to become the first in their families to seek higher...